The disk storage market in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) posted double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2012, compared to the same quarter last year, according to the latest data from analysyt firm IDC.

Revenue was up 17.25 per cent year on year, reaching US$2.26 billion. Capacity expressed in terabytes was up 41 per cent year on year in 2012, and IDC expects further robust growth in capacity consumption by the end of the year. The development reflects the current increasing adoption of cloud technologies, the need for analytics, mobility trends, and prevalence of social networking.

"Mixed results were observed on a country-wide level, but overall, the region is in recovery mode. A tough economic climate coupled with recent political developments has made this traditionally deal-driven market adopt a conservative approach," says research analyst Arun Philip. "Projects have been placed on hold and pipelines extended as the market opts to 'wait and watch' for calmer waters."

Despite these inhibitors, the North African region, as well as Nigeria and South Africa, registered double-digit growth in the disk storage market year on year. Deals across telecom, banking and manufacturing sectors have boosted the need for storage solutions owing to ever-increasing volumes of data.

There has been tremendous growth in the InfiniBand and iSCSI protocols in the MEA region, especially across the Dell and EMC models. This goes hand in hand with a gradual shift away from DAS and NAS protocols. RAID is still the de facto choice for redundancy purposes, with over 94 per cent share of all shipped models.